Copywriting for Hotels Part 3: How to Get the Sale

This is the third post in a three-part series on copywriting strategies for hotel marketers. The hospitality and tourism industries are unique, so when it comes to copywriting some slightly different tactics are needed. This series will walk you through everything you need to know about writing effective copy for any hotel. Click here for Part 1. Click here for Part 2.

If you’ve been following along with this series you’ve learned two important lessons:

1. How to define your hotel’s unique selling proposition (USP).
2. How to use persuasive writing techniques to get your readers thinking about choosing your hotel.

These are great skills to have, but they mean nothing if you don’t know how to convince people to reach for their wallet and book a room with you.

Let’s take your website for example.

Think of your website like a store. The USP and headlines you display on your online ads and in search results are the signs outside, whether that be the actual sign for the store or window signs advertising some sort of sale. The signage inside the store is your website copy. It helps people find what they’re looking for and gives them more information on specific products inside the store.

Now, sometimes people already know exactly what they’re looking for. They go into the store, they find the product they need and they buy it. It’s great when that happens, but what do you do if people aren’t quite sure what they want to buy or need more information?

That’s where salespeople come in.

Salespeople are there to answer people’s questions and help them find the product that best suits their needs. But a good salesperson also knows how to take someone who’s unsure about making a purchase and assure them they are making a good decision by buying the product in question. They know how to close the deal and get the sale.

So, if your USP and headline are the signs outside, and your introductory copy is the signage inside the store, then your offer pages, landing pages, and other conversion-focused copy are the salespeople.

Let’s say someone is familiar with your hotel. They’ve seen your marketing and are attracted by your USP. They were drawn in with your strong headlines, and your informative and persuasive copy has them considering booking a room at your hotel for their next trip.

How exactly do you get someone to take that leap from thinking about booking a room to actually making a purchase?

Create a Strong Offer

You’ve told potential guests all about your hotel. Now it’s time to give them your offer.

If you used the persuasive writing techniques outlined in Part 2 properly you’ll have done an excellent job of convincing people your hotel is a great place to stay. However, it won’t mean anything if your offer doesn’t make people feel like they’re getting good value.

Far too often I visit hotel websites and their only offer is their room rate. Unless your room rate is significantly lower than your competitors’ you’re not giving people a very strong reason to book a room with you.

Obviously, if your hotel is offering some sort of sale or discount that is a very strong offer and you should lead with that. But you can’t be discounting your rooms all year round. Luckily there are a number of ways to come up with a strong offer that holds a lot of perceived value.

First, think of all the items that are included with a stay at your hotel. Do you offer free breakfast in the morning? Complimentary coffee in your rooms? Free WiFi? You can always include these items in your offer to increase the value.

Are you able to offer a discount for a certain number of room nights? For example, if someone books four nights with you they’ll save 10%. Even a discount as low as 10% can seem enticing. People love knowing they’ve saved money, even if it’s a small amount.

Finally, are you able to combine multiple items into a package? This can include accommodation, food, activities, or anything else your hotel offers. An offer that has multiple items bundled into one price will often be perceived as having a better value than an offer that only has one item. This can be true even if the price of the first offer is higher than the second.

Here some examples of some offers, based on the suggestions above:

“One night’s stay and complimentary breakfast buffet for only $119”

“Save 10% when you book a four-night stay”

“Get 3 nights’ accommodation, a couple’s massage and a complimentary bottle of champagne for just $549”

Don’t all of these sounds more appealing than “Room rates starting at $149?”

Here are a few more examples of hotel offers I found from around the web:

Remember, your offer doesn’t have to be the cheapest, it just needs to have the best-perceived value.

Justify the Purchase

In Part 2 we talked about appealing to people’s emotions.

It’s true that people make decisions based on their emotions. But oftentimes, we need to justify that decision with logic before we can actually go through with it.

How many times have you contemplated having dessert and justified it by saying something along the lines of “I worked out earlier today so I deserve to have this giant bowl of ice cream”? You want the emotional high you get from having that ice cream, but you know it’s not the best decision so you try to justify it to yourself with logic so you feel better about your decision.

This isn’t to say that vacations and trips are bad decisions, but as we talked about in Part 2 there are likely other more logical ways people can spend their money. So, while you need to appeal to people’s emotions to help persuade them to stay at your hotel, you’ll also need to help them justify their purchase with logic when it actually comes time for them to book a room.

There are a number of ways you can do this.

Perhaps the simplest way is to use the “You deserve this” strategy. Remind people how hard they’ve been working, whether that be at their jobs or raising their families. Tell people they’ve earned the right to go on a vacation and have some fun.

You can remind people of the benefits of vacations. Tell them how they will gain lasting memories while spending intimate time with their partner or quality time with their family. You can also let people know that those who take vacations generally have lower stress, less risk of heart disease, and a better outlook on life (studies have proven all of this to be true).

Do you have amenities or advantages over your competitors? State those advantages here, even if you’ve already mentioned them. Reinforce the idea that your hotel is a better option than your competitors’.

Finally, if people are saving money or getting an especially good deal, remind them. People always feel better about buying something if they know they’re getting a really good price.

These are just a few examples. Think of as many justifications as you can for staying at your hotel and include them in your copy.

Leverage Testimonials

You can justify staying at your hotel to potential guests all you want, but your word will never hold as much weight as former guests.

In addition to justifying the purchase yourself, it’s always a good idea to include several positive testimonials to reinforce the notion that booking a room at your hotel is a good idea.

Booking a hotel room is a fairly major purchase. When someone makes a purchase like that their worst fear is telling their friends and family about it and hearing “You got ripped off” or “That hotel is no good, you should have booked a room at Hotel X.”

Whether it’s conscious or not, these thoughts are running through everyone’s mind right before they make a major purchase.

By showing people several positive testimonials they’ll be able to be reassured by their peers that they are about to make a good and sound decision by booking a room with you. They’ll be much more comfortable handing over their credit card information and going through with the purchase.

Use a Call to Action

So, by now you’ve told people al about your amazing offer and you’ve given them a bunch of reasons why accepting your offer is a great idea.

Now it’s time to ask them to actually take action and make a purchase. This is where the call to action (CTA) comes in.

A CTA is a statement that explicitly tells the reader what action you want them to take. Some examples of CTA’s are:

“Buy Now”

“Sign Up”

“Book Your Room Today”

Studies have shown that a CTA is the most proven way to get your readers to act. You can give them all the reasons in the world why they should book a room at your hotel, but if you don’t ask for the sale chances are they won’t give you their money.

For online ads and landing pages, the CTA is usually placed on a clickable button or made a link that sends people to a page where people can make the intended purchase.

So, how do you go about writing an effective call to action? Here are a few tips:

• Tell them, don’t ask them: It may seem pushy, but the most effective CTA’s are direct. “Book your room today,” is a lot more effective than “Would you like to book your room?”
• Keep it simple: Don’t make your CTA’s too complicated. A simple and clear CTA that tells people exactly what action you want them to take will work best.
• Only use one CTA per ad or webpage: Don’t confuse your readers by having multiple CTA’s. Every ad or landing page should only have one specific action that it’s trying to get the reader to take. Use your copy to lay out all the reasons why they should take that action. Then, when you’ve given the reader all the information they need to make a decision, use a CTA to close the deal and get them to take that action.

Add a Sense of Urgency

Another thing you can do to make your CTA, and your copy in general, more effective is to add a sense of urgency.

If your potential guest has read all the way to your CTA chances are they are very close to actually booking a room with you. However, even if you’ve done an excellent job of putting together a tempting offer and justifying the purchase chances are they still have a little bit of doubt about going through with it.

The last thing you want them to do is to walk away from your copy so they can “think about it.” A lot can happen after they put down your ad or close your website. They can come across another offer from your competitor, they can decide to change the destination of their trip, or they can decide not to take a trip at all. All of this might mean you lose out on their business.

Because of this, the goal of your copy shouldn’t just be to get them to book a room with you, it should be to book a room with you at right that very moment.

You can do this in a few different ways.

The first is by simply suggesting the reader take action right away. You’ll notice a lot of CTA’s contain a sense of urgency (buy now, sign up today, etc.) Even the subtle suggestion that the action should be taken at that moment can increase the effectiveness of your CTA.

The second is by including a time limit. Does your offer have an expiry date? Will you be raising your price after a certain amount of time? Are there only a limited number of rooms available? If any of these apply to your offer make sure to mention that in your copy.

Here’s an example of one of the headlines we saw in Part 2:

This is a great offer, and the addition of a sense of urgency makes it even more effective. In fact, they convey urgency in three different ways: They say that it’s a flash sale, they list the expiration date, and they have a countdown clock.

Get creative. The more urgency you can add to your copy the better chance there is that potential guests won’t wait to book their room with you.

That being said, never stretch the truth or lie about the urgency of your offer. Some retailers abuse this tactic and are constantly advertising never-ending sales that are only a day away from being over. If people find out you were deceitful about the urgency of your offer you’ll lose their trust and they’ll be far less likely to do business with you in the future.

Do whatever you can to add a sense of urgency, but always be honest with potential guests.

Make Booking as Easy as Possible

My final tip actually doesn’t have anything to do with writing but is extremely important if you want your copywriting to be successful.

If you’ve followed all the steps in this guide then by the time your readers get to the end of your copy they should be eager to book a room with you. This is where you need to make it as easy as possible for them to actually follow through and make a booking.

Your website copy should always include several links and buttons that take people to your booking page. As mentioned earlier, it’s a good idea to make your CTA a link to your booking page. That way people don’t have to look for it. When they’re ready to book the link is right there in front of them.

On printed materials use vanity URLs to make the address easier to remember and type into their web browser. Vanity URLs are short catchy URLs that redirect people to the actual page. They’re useful when the actual URL is long and complicated.

For example, let’s say that you want to send people to this page:

http://www.hotelx.com/vacations/packages/romantic_getaway

In this case, you would want to create a vanity URL to make it shorter and easier to remember, like this:

hotelx.com/RomanticGetaway

The next time you run a print campaign that includes a link make sure to ask your website manager about vanity URLs.

When directing people to a booking page, make sure it’s the booking page for the specific offer you’re advertising. You don’t want to direct people to a page with a bunch of different booking options. This will just confuse them and they might even forget what offer they wanted to book in the first place.

It’s also a good idea to include a phone number that people can call along with any links. Some people feel more comfortable speaking to someone before making a major purchase. Just make sure that your sales agents are briefed on all of your offerings. The last thing you want is to have someone call about a specific offer you advertised only to have the sales agent not know what they are talking about. This is another way to cause confusion and make people second guess their decision.

Remember, all the work you put into your copy will be worthless if the booking process is complicated and confusing. By making it as easy as possible for people to book you’ll drastically increase the effectiveness of your copy.

Conclusion

Being able to take a reader from being interested in making a purchase to actually making that purchase is the key to being an effective copywriter. By following the steps outlined here you’ll be able to utilize the tactics used by the world’s best copywriters to increase your conversions and get more bookings for your hotel.